The pen be busted down.

[birdeen's call]

"And he spake this parable unto them, saying, 'What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.'"

I recollect the time Sam Hawkins lost his sow. He come out one morning; the pen be busted down; the sow was gone. Sam lit out after her to find her. He had 67 other pigs that didn't run off. But did Sam get down on his marrow bones and thank the Good Lord for that? No, sirree, not Sam!

A preacher says that at the beginning of Sergeant York, the 1941 film. Is "light out" used today? I had to look it up, and they say it's a slang expression from around the 1800s. Would it be comprehensible today? And "marrow bones", I only know it from culinary contexts and "get down on one's marrow bones" seems colorful but strange to me. How about it?

 

[lauralie2]

The phrase "lit out", yes, it's comprehensible today: to go fast. As for "marrow bone", no, I'm not familiar with it.

 

[BobK]

'Marrow bone' tends to be used now in a culinary sense; also 'bone marrow'. But the idea (the semi-liquid stuff inside bones) is preserved in the idiom 'frozen to the marrow' [=feeling* very cold].

b

PS * A person or some other animate being - anything with bones - has to feel it; a hammer, or a room can be cold, but not 'frozen to the marrow'.